Posts Tagged ‘EA bans’

So this is interesting. After we’ve hounded EA for over a year about their bans preventing players from accessing single-player games, and after a year of receiving peculiarly ambiguous statements, and promises to fix things in time periods that now gather dust, EA has finally (a full year since we first raised the issue with them) partly fixed this issue. Partly. Being banned multiplayer violations will no longer lock you out of your single-player games, and their DLC. Because, it seems, they’ve fixed their Offline mode. But there’s no word on whether forum violations can still affect gaming access.

There’s a slight problem with internet polls. And that problem is the internet. I can think of no greater example than in 2009, the year Time’s Top 100 Most Influential People list not only saw 4Chan’s ‘moot’ take the top spot, but the top 21 entries be arranged in the order 4Chan wanted them. It was magnificent. (Heck, as long ago as 1998 internet voting saw Time’s Person Of The Year go to wrestler Mick Foley, which the magazine then vetoed.) So, while there are clearly serious lessons for the company to learn, yesterday’s announcement that EA is the worst company in America, according to readers of the Consumerist, should perhaps be taken with a pinch of incredulity.

Well this is all jolly interesting. Remember the story about Star Wars: The Old Republic banning a player because he’d been to Ilum at too low a level, and been looting the containers? And remember how it looked pretty dodgy, and was probably a fake? Well here’s the thing: it wasn’t. It was real. But, as you might imagine, there were a few details missed out.

Oh goodness me, can this really be true? A pic of an email is circulating this morning purporting to be a communication from EA, informing a player that their account has been banned from playing Star Wars: The Old Republic, because their character visited, and looted within, a high level area. Because, they say, this violates their terms of service. If this proves to be the case, and that’s purely the reason, it may be the most ridiculous EA ban yet. However, there are a lot of reasons to assume it’s either a fake, or things are a lot more complicated. Take a look.

To keep you up to date with the status of our investigation into EA’s dubious banning players from accessing their Origin account games (mostly multiplayer, although we’re hearing exceptions), we have, well, no news.

Unfortunately, despite repeated attempts to receive a statement on EA’s current position on their banning procedure, we have only been met with silence for the last fortnight. After some initial responses, pointing affected customers toward their support lines, we received an ambiguous statement that avoided the current issue and rather said there were plans to “review” whatever the current secret policy might be. And then no responses to our emails since. All the while, we’re hearing of case after case of customers being affected.

For the last week I’ve been sending quite a few emails to various people within EA, trying to get to the bottom of why gamers receiving forum bans are finding they do not have access to their Origin online gaming. My goal has been to get a clear understanding of their current policy on the matter, since the company’s actions don’t appear to match the statements made in 2008, and March this year. On both occasions they have made it clear that forum bans should not affect access to games, and yet it’s quite obvious that’s not the case. So what is going on? We’re getting closer to understanding. While we’ve still no clear idea what their current policy actually is, EA have promised me that they are “planning a policy update which will include more equitable rules”, with a view to having “the time fit the crime.”

You may remember, back in March this year, a story that threw EA forum user Arno into the limelight. Having violated the rules of the EA forums he was given a 72 hour ban on his forum account. But found that he was also unable to play online with any of his games attached to his EA gaming account, nor activate his single-player Dragon Age II. This led to quite the brouhaha, which eventually resulted in EA’s announcing that the ban had been “a mistake”, and the promise that not only would Arno’s gaming rights be restored, but they would fix the issue to prevent this happening again. They haven’t.

We are receiving information from a number of gamers who have received forum bans for a variety of reasons who are finding they’re unable to play Battlefield 3 (or indeed any other game tied into the EA user account), and worse, when they try to contact EA for help sorting this out, they are either ignored or told it’s tough. So what’s going on?

So what is the latest word on EA and BioWare banning users from games? You may remember that on Friday, the now-famous Arno found he was unable to access his copy of Dragon Age II because he made a rude-ish comment on the BioWare forums. This saw a 72 hour forum ban, which, it seemed, also froze his EA account, which meant he could not authenticate his copy of DA2, and nor could he play other EA games tied into the account. It was highlighted on a few sites, and we spoke to Arno himself to get his side of the story. Later that day Arno received a personal email from the Senior Director of Customer Services himself, Boyd Beasley, explaining that this had been an error, with accompanying profuse apologies. Since we wrote the story we’ve heard about the same happening to other gamers, as long ago as a year back, and indeed it happened again to someone else over the weekend. Asking EA about this, they’ve given us a statement explaining that this continues to be a fault, and they’re working on fixing it by the end of the week. But we’re left with some questions.

Original story: Be careful what you say. That’s the lesson BioWare forum user Arno has learned in the last 24 hours, after an ill-advised comment on the BioWare forums has led to his EA account being locked, such that he cannot play his purchased copy of Dragon Age 2 for 72 hours.

It reveals a clause in the terms of service that accompany buying an EA game that will surprise the vast majority who do not read the microprint. Misbehave in the forum (as Arno fully admits he did), and you can have your right to play a legitimately purchased game taken away from you. Forever, if they want to.